With the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011, many tech industry experts were quick to predict that his company, Apple, Inc., would soon falter without its charismatic founder at the helm. Yet in the years since Jobs’ successor, Tim Cook, has taken the wheel, Apple has not only continued on, but flourished.

The design starts off well, but gets lazy towards the bottom with a number of statistics shown in text only, and not visualized. Readers will perceive these values as less important and visually skim right over them. With a mix of visualized data and text only data, the text only values are perceived as secondary information and often ignored.

I really like the character illustrations. They are minimal, but still easily recognizable. The same goes for the product icons. Minimal but easily recognizable.

The footer does a good job with sources and the company logo, but should have also included the URL link back to the original infographic landing page so readers can find the full-size original version.

In 1978 my father took me as an excuse to go see that movie about silly robots and spaceships that everybody was talking about. I didn’t get much at that time, since I was very young, but what I do remember well is how much I enjoyed beginning my first geeky action figures collection that came right after the movie. My first figure ever was Luke Skywalker, a figure that got lost over the years. I’m still looking for it on my parent’s attic. Where are you Luke Skywalker?

With the time I became a fan, of course. As homage to that great moment of my life, here’s a new poster featuring (almost) every character of the first Star Wars trilogy in order of appearance. It is of course limited and numbered. If you want a copy, this link will take you to Spoke Art Gallery’s online shop where you can easily order one and receive it at your front door. We gave the mailmen specific orders to be dressed as Storm troopers during delivery, but they didn’t take it so well, so they probably won’t.

Apple Release Patterns is a new personal project of mine, and you can find the full-size original versions on a new, dedicated landing page on the InfoNewt.com site. Every few months Apple releases a new product update or redesign, and the rumors start flying about what the upcoming product will be during the preceding weeks. For better or worse, those speculations are often based on what was released in the same timeframe the prior year.

This data visualization lines up vertical columns for each year, starting with 2007. I decided that anything further back wasn’t really relevant to Apple’s current practices. Each product release is then mapped onto the calendar, showing a pattern (or lack of pattern) to the product releases. If the product announcement was separate from the actual release date, I mapped that date as well.

This data was ripe for a visualization. When I tried to look at the historical dates of product releases, the information was scattered across multiple sites, confusing and difficult to gather. Some information was contradictory, which required further investigation. So, the data topic itself was a good target for a clear, easy-to-understand visualization. However, the design with all of the products was too complicated visually to perceive any defining patterns. So, I created separate versions that break out the products into 3 categories, and those are much easier for readers to see the patterns.

For iOS devices (iPod, iPad, iPhone and AppleTV) you can see the pattern shift in 2011 for most of the products to a Fall timeframe. You can also see a recently consistent announcement date with the product release the following Friday.

For Apple’s laptop line, the MacBooks, you can see the MacBook Air has become a regular release during the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, and the MacBook Pro gets fairly regular updates twice a year, usually just to update the internal specifications.

The desktop Mac line doesn’t seem to show much pattern at all. They might get an update each year, but the timing is erratic. Sometimes they are part of WWDC, sometimes part of the Fall iOS events, and sometimes completely on their own.

I’m going to keep updating these on the landing page as Apple releases new products in the future (upcoming iPad Mini 2 Retina and Mac Pro still need to start shipping this year). I want these to become a valuable resource every time the Apple rumor mill heats up about the next product announcement. If you use the embed code on the Apple Release Patterns landing page, your site will also display the updates automatically as they become available.

This is version 1.0. I have some ideas and improvements I want to make in future versions, but I would love to hear your thoughts as well. Post any suggestions or feedback in the comments below.

Looking for car insurance can be a time consuming and expensive business. However, if you were trying to insure some of these film treasures you might expect a few extra zeros on the end of your premium! From the Ford Mercury that James Dean famously drove in his last film, Rebel Without a Cause, to the brand new Audi R8 e-tron that Tony Stark drives in Iron Man 3, cars have played a massive part in iconic film history.

However, it is not always the ultra-cool cars that steal the limelight in blockbuster movies. Quite often the most memorable cars are the most unlikely. Take, for instance the Cadillac ‘Ecto-1’ that the Ghostbusters used to get around the busy New York streets, or the Volkswagen Beetle that got into so many scrapes in the Herbie movies.

To celebrate these unlikely heroes, we’ve taken a look at the timeline of great cars of the silver screen.

Interesting topic choice for Money Super Market. For successful infographics, choosing a relevant topic with related keywords and search criteria can make a big difference. Good link bait brings views and links from readers that are interested in the topic, and ideally even raises awareness with potential customers.

I’d like to hear your opinion. Is this infographic about cars from movies relevant to a site that helps people find car insurance? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Designed by InfoNewt, this infographic is a good case study in topic selection and release timing. September was a month full of Apple iPhone news and hysteria surrounding the release of the new iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C and the major upgrade to iOS 7. There were a bunch of infographics released about the rumors surrounding the new phones, but as soon as the new iPhones were officially announced all of the rumor designs became obsolete.

The topic choice and data visualized in this design has a much longer online lifespan. The content about the history and growth of the iPhone will be relevant for at least a year, maybe longer. The infographic will continue to drive traffic and links to the NextWorth site.

Last week, Google celebrated its 15th year, and posted the Google Search Timeline to help remember how far we have come in that time.

Google Search is turning 15. Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You’d sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words. It seemed like magic (and it was way way faster than card catalogs and microfiche!).

I love the visual design, with icons and minimal text in the design to show all of the major milestones.

I don’t understand the increasing area chart across the bottom though. It isn’t representing any data, and each step up coincides with one of the major advancements across the top. It’s visual, but it doesn’t have any meaning. You would think it could show the growing total number of searches or stock price or amount of data processed.

When the original Star Trek television series started, male and female officers wore similar outfits. The male Star Trek uniforms consisted of black pants, black boots and a velour shirt with the symbol on the left side. Females wore the same type of shirt, with black boots and tights, and a black skirt, although in some cases they wore black pants. The color of shirt worn identified the branch the crew member belonged to. Those in green shirts worked for command personnel, while beige stood for operations, and blue was for medical personnel only. The velour shirts were changed to nylon shirts starting in the third season. You can find many of the Star Trek Costumes here.

Don’t be the red-shirted ensign!

The footer of the design should include the copyright information and the URL to the original infographic landing page so readers can see the full-size infographic. The Costume Supercenter logo should also be somewhere on the design to connect the infographic to the publishing company.

A creative timeline view of The History of: Music Media infographic from Indigo Boom. The colors track the popularity of each new and old source of music media through the years. From left to right it goes 0% popular to 100% popular.

Selling music as recordings first became possible in 1877 with the introduction of the phonograph cylinder. Since then media formats have developed and radically changed the way we listen, and recently even where we can listen to music. We have looked at the last 30 years of music format development and popularity in the infographic below.

Beautiful, colorful design. This is a vertical stacked area chart covering the last 30+ years of music sales. You can see that in 1980 (where the chart begins) vinyl was already in decline. CDs have had a big run, but downloads are obviously growing to become the new dominant method to get music.

I like that the design tells one story really well, and doesn’t get into a whole bunch of extra data points. It’s a simple, clear story to the readers who can understand the content quickly and then move on.

The source listing of The RIAA is too vague. Source listings should include a link to the specific data so others can examine the original dataset if they wish. I went to the RIAA site, and it appears that they are selling this information in a report. Publishing the data publicly in an infographic may be a violation of the terms of service or copyright of the report, but I can’t tell because I can’t determine where the specific data originated.

The URL to the infographic landing page should be included in the footer of the design so readers can find the original when they come across a smaller version posted on another site. Not all sites are good about linking back to the original.

Sadly, no high-resolution versions of the poster are available online, but the data is available to view from within the iTunes Store. You can see the images, icons and events, but they aren’t laid out like the poster timeline. You can view the events in iTunes by following this link.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is very common. About 1 in 50 school aged children had parent reported ASD in 2011-2012. There have been changes in DSM-5 with the category of Autism Spectrum Disorder being introduced which includes Autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, Rett’s disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-NOS from DSM-IV. Researchers have studied several important questions in this disorder.

This is a big design with a bunch of good information. However, I think it’s way too much text for an infographic. Infographics should make information easier to understand, and most readers won’t stick around to read this much information. In fact, many readers won’t read any of the information because that much text is intimidating and implies an investment of time and attention by the reader.

The information is fantastic, and should have been broken up into multiple infographics to cover the different topics. This would make the information easier to digest, and would also spread out links and views to the hosting site over a longer period of time.